5B Activities for the Week of September 22nd, 2014

Hello Parents and Students,

Here are the reminders for this week:

1.  Curriculum Night is this Monday, September 22nd.  Kindergarten through 5th grade Session I is from 6:30-6:55.  The whole school session is in the gym from 7:05-7:25.  Kindergarten through 5th grade session 2 is from 7:35-8:00.  This schedule allows parents of more than one student to visit both classrooms.  Also, please remember to sign up for November Parent-Teacher Conferences in the multi-purpose room on this night.   Curriculum Night is an adult only evening.

2.  If you have not done so already, please send our room parent, Jen Straub, your email address as soon as possible.  Her email address is fpjlstraub@yahoo.com.

3.  Track and Field Day will be Monday, October 6th.  Ms. Andrews is looking for parent helpers.  Please contact her if you are interested.

Here's what's going on in the curricular areas this week in 5B: 

Word Study:  This week we will be studying Part II of Open Syllables.  The words have been posted to the blog.  The test will be on Friday.  This week's word study lesson went very well since we had five full days to get through it.  :-)

Math Accel:  We are currently working on our Transfer Task in MA.  The students are in groups and practicing their drama skills!  We completed our menus and are now doing some restaurant role-playing.  They are pretending that they are in a restaurant and one group member is a waiter/waitress who is taking all of their orders.  They are then responsible for calculating their total cost, determining the gratuity and adding taxes.  All is going well!  We should finish up this activity Monday or Tuesday and will then begin working on powers of 10 and exponents.  Possibly, late in the week, we may begin whole number division.

ELA:  We finished up the book, Because of Mr. Terupt last Friday.  The kids really enjoyed the ending!  Monday, we will begin our first CCSS anchor text, Becoming Naomi Leon.  We will finish up our first 20 days of citizenship this week.  Our topics will include common courtesies and times when it's best to mind your own business.  We will then begin our Cool Tool lessons and our first one will focus on empathy.  We have had some great discussions about the Where I'm From poem by George Ella Lyon.  We enjoyed watching the video clip.  This week, we will continue to answer the pre-write discussion questions which will better prepare us for writing our own Where I'm From poems.

Science:  We've been very busy in science lately!  We completed two experiments this week (both about molecules) and this week we will be discussing air pressure, air temperature, and air.  We will discuss how air takes up space and complete an experiment on this topic.  Later in the week we will focus on Fronts and what happens when a warm and cold front meet.  There will also be an experiment to demonstrate this.  If time allows, we will also practice reading a barometer.  If not, that will move to next week.

That's it for now.  Any questions or concerns, please email me.  Thank you!

Mrs. Bennick :-)